Don’t Mess with Perry Mason

PERRY MASON reruns have been playing on a Portland, Oregon TV station every day for 42 years.:

When Patrick McCreery was named general manager at Portland’s Fox KPTV six months ago, corporate bosses gave him a free hand as long as he followed an unwritten 42-year-old rule: Don’t mess with “Perry Mason.”
“It’s untouchable,” McCreery said. “We can add shows and take others off the air, but ‘Perry’ is nothing to fool with.”
[…]Managers don’t know of another U.S. station that’s continuously broadcast “Perry Mason” as long as KPTV, where the show debuted 15 days after ending its nine-year run on CBS. It’s among the least-expensive shows to buy, even as KPTV has moved from showing it on film reels to 1-inch tapes to digital tapes and now digital with closed captioning.
“Most markets don’t want it,” Dunevant said. “They figure that with high-definition sets and 5.1 stereo sound, what viewer is going to want to watch an old black-and-white show? We’ve found very loyal viewers. It’s the linchpin of our daytime programming.”

5 thoughts on “Don’t Mess with Perry Mason”

  1. Sadly, I know many people with zero interest in viewing anything black-and-white . . . or “old” . . . or of good quality. 🙂
    I wish they played it in the Seattle area. The series seemed to always be on the daytime/late-night schedules when I lived in the Midwest.

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  2. This makes perfect sense to me. There is comfort in an consistent reliable program of vintage stock. It isn’t simply the quality of the show, although that is certainly a factor. KREM TV in Spokane aired MAVERICK re-runs consistently every Saturday afternoon at the same time for YEARS, perhaps they still do. It is nice to know there are somethings that you can count on — Perry Mason EVERY DAY for all of your life in Portland gives one a sense of connection and grounding that cannot be achieved by relentless “newness”
    As for the illusion that a b/w show can’t kick ass, recall that THE SAINT b/w episodes in first run syndication on indies beat network fare in the ratings! Go figure.

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  3. I wish they showed Perry In this area of the country.
    On a related note, a local station does the same thing with Andy Griffith. Been running the show for who knows how long at 5:30 p.m. week days.

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